Jonathan Larson, late ‘Rent’ writer, receives tribute in ‘tick … tick … BOOM!’

Can you imagine what else Jonathan Larson would have written had he not tragically died in 1996 on the eve of the first public performance of Rent? At the time, Larson was only 35. When Stephen Sondheim was 35, he had yet to even reach his peak. In response to the mega-success of Rent and the desire to examine everything else that Larson wrote, tick…tick…BOOM!, a three-person, 90-minute rock musical based on an autobiographical piece that Larson himself once performed, was produced Off-Broadway in 2001 at the now defunct Jane Street Theatre, where Hedwig and the Angry Inch also premiered.